Mathew Tansini writes as if he knows a lot about comedy. His convictions are such that, if you knew less about comedy than Tansini, you might well be taken in. But to know less than Tansini you would need to be from a place that doesn’t understand stand-up comedy, like Afghanistan or the Isle of […]
Lene Korseberg is an OK reviewer, but she lacks confidence in her own words. The result is that she says the same thing over and over again, but in a different way. To illustrate this point, Lene Koseberg could be quite a good reviewer, but tends to over-explain things as if uncertain that her point […]
Keith Smith writes like a Private Eye journalist writing a parody local news item: think Phil Space or Lunchtime O’Booze. The only thing lacking from his reviews is the signoff “Will this do?” and the response “You’re fired: Ed”. A man of action, Keith likes to start his sentences with a verb. Doing this is […]
There is nothing wrong with Milly Reilly’s reviews from a comedian’s point of view. She’s fair, she’s exacting; she goes through everything point by point. You won’t find her going all hatchety on anyone’s ass. There is, however, no real point getting a ticket to anything she reviews as she will have explained everything you […]
I really cannot say anything about Joe Walsh that would sum him up better than his own sweet words. Take this: “It’s not important that a show hosted by Jo Caulfield is essentially starting at the bottom of a steep hill, as stimulating as her observational comedy and mundane audience interaction are.” So, you’re starting […]
Isobel Steer needs to decide what she likes; what she is passionate about in comedy, and then decide whether the things she is looking at match up to what she likes. At the moment she’s trying too hard to cover all bases and is watching comedy with a detached disengagement that doesn’t quite work. Thus, […]
If you’re going to give someone a two-star review, Hilary, have some mercy: do it quick and do it clean. A 500-word dissertation on everything that happened in a show, along with what was wrong with it, seasoned with innumerable little jokes of your own, is inexcusable. It’s the reviewing equivalent of the axeman who […]
Reading Faith Ashleigh-Wong’s reviews reminded this Panda of a writing style a world away from Fringe buffoonery. In short, Ashleigh-Wong writes like a restaurant reviewer. And not a shitty modern restaurant reviewer of the Giles Coren talk-about-anything-but-the-food type. No. This is like the restaurant reviews you get in the Telegraph, or Conde Nast. Check out […]
Purely in the interest of dotting the i and crossing the t of this collection of reviewer reviews, I present, joylessly, my review of Eleanor Lang. I really shouldn’t have to bother, because Lang only reviewed one piece of comedy in 2013, preferring to review theatre and ‘physical’, whatever the hell ‘physical’ is. Also, she performed […]